Thinking is Hard (repost)
Cover Image by Tima Miroshnichenko from PexelsBy Althea Need KaminskeThis week I had the opportunity to teach a guest lecture for medical students interested in AI in Medicine. In preparing for the talk I was, once again, struck by how challenging learning, and especially learning in medicine, can be. Many of the most effective study…
Retrieval Practice vs. Worked Examples: When to Use Which
Now the fun part… to make sure that participants didn’t have any background knowledge in the area, they were exposed to a new alien language and alien math where they had to figure out the rules. For example, in English you can add -ed to the end of a verb to make it past tense…
How Do Secondary Students Study, and Are Their Choices Related to Their Beliefs in...
*For the uninitiated, a Toniebox is a little speaker. They work with special figurines, called Tonies. The kids put a Tonie on the box and it starts playing whatever is loaded. Some read stories, some play music, and some are like little screen-free “shows” that teach the kids about concepts and sing. By the way,…
Self-Regulating Motivation and Emotion During Learning
Throughout the paper, Stockinger et al. (2026) highlight the interplay between motivational regulation and emotional regulation and call for a model of self-regulated learning that acknowledges how closely interwoven the two can be. An aspect of this work that I find really interesting is the emphasis on how the learner perceives the process. Is the…
A Framework for Student Performance
As one example, maybe a student tends to overthink questions and often selects the wrong question. One strategy students can use is to rate each answer choice from -3 to +3 based on the evidence they have to support it. If they have a lot of evidence against an answer choice, they would rate it…
“Blips” of Knowledge Reduce Accuracy and Increase Confidence
Implications for EducationThis article studies medical diagnostic information. The implications I’m about to share represent an assumption that this might translate to other domains.In a world where information is not only available, but sometimes thrust upon us whether we like it or not, it’s important to be aware that these short “blips” of knowledge may…
Retrieval Practice and Stress (repost)
School can be stressful, and 2020 has been a particularly stressful year for many of us. So, for this week’s blog, I thought I would write about retrieval practice and stress. Fortunately, I get to share some good news! Prior research has shown that acute stress can hinder our ability to retrieve information. Acute stress is…
The Benefits of Combining Collaborative Learning and Interleaved Practice
By Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel In a recent paper, Danzglock, Berger, and Hänze (1) investigated the effects of combining collaborative learning with interleaved practice using complex material in physics in 376 secondary school students. Interleaved practice is when tasks or concepts are practiced together instead of organizing their practice in a blocked (and homogenous) fashion. To give…
Learner Perceived Similarity and Transfer
Cover image by katerinavulcova from PixabayBy Althea Need KaminskeTransfer of learning, the process by which people can recognize and apply previously learned information to different situations, is one of the primary goals of education. We can think of transfer and learning as happening along a continuum from highly similar to highly dissimilar. Learning, when people…
Feedback emPower Tools: How to Make Your Feedback Go Further
For today’s blog post, I interviewed Dr Rob Nash who together with Prof Naomi Winstone and Dr Kieran Balloo created the website Feedback emPower Tools. Feedback emPower Tools sets out to help learners engage and process feedback they receive. For learners it can be challenging to engage with feedback, perhaps because they either do not…
